In an effort to increase the viability of solar radiation as a widespread and accessible class of renewable energy, researchers are actively developing solutions to lower the cost of deploying highly efficient photovoltaic (PV) devices for power generation. One approach is to use an inexpensive platform capable of focusing energy to a set of small PV cells, a strategy that is the basis of the luminescent solar concentrator (LSC). LSCs generally comprise transparent plastic or glass slabs that contain photoluminescent dyes whose resulting emission upon exposure to sunlight is guided by the slab through total internal reflection to smaller PV cells attached at the edges of the device. Because of their ability to collect diffuse light without the need to track the sun's location at any given part of the day, LSCs may be conveniently incorporated into various residential or commercial infrastructures to produce energy-efficient establishments. Although promising architectures for economic and strategic solar installations, conventional LSCs are often plagued by a multitude of unfavorable processes that curb their ability to efficiently deliver light to PV cells.
Accordingly, improved compositions and methods are needed.